Strange bedfellows? NGO–corporate relations in international development: an NGO perspective

In the last decade, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have increasingly diversified their corporate engagement offering, among other things, research partnerships to develop new products and advice to improve value chains and positively impact on development. These partnerships present new opportunities for NGOs. But opportunities habitually come with risks, and NGOs are frequently ill-equipped to deal with them because they are still using old tools to assess new and more complex realities. If NGOs are to develop relationships with the private sector that are beneficial for both them and the communities they work with, they must bring their systems and policies for private sector engagement up to date with the new realities. This paper examines some of the current weaknesses in NGO–corporate engagement and presents recommendations for improvement that include adopting a much more comprehensive approach that does not only assess risks associated with specific (funding or corporate campaigning) relationships, but also takes stock of the different relative positions of power of the two parties; that acknowledges the vast diversity of actors within the ‘private sector’; and that enables NGOs to have a much more sophisticated understanding of the ‘development footprint’ made by the private sector companies they engage with.